So, Marie Kondo has given up on tidying

and I am here for it

(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. If you need or prefer to get your info via audio, I hope it’s helpful. Please note it is unedited, so includes life noises and word stumbles, and today, just for you, the moment my phone rings mid recording! Yay.)

A dog in a hat always sparks joy.

In case you missed it, Marie Kondo, of the ‘does it spark joy’ method of decluttering that took the world by storm back in 2015, mentioned in a recent interview that she had “kind of given up” on tidying.

The full quote gives more context (but less opportunity for headlines)…

“Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times. I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home.”

To me, this sounds like a person who has recognised a new season of life, and accepts that the approach that used to work, no longer does.

However, no sooner had she uttered these words did certain parts of the internet seem to lose their collective minds. There were think pieces and mean-spirited schadenfreude-heavy articles and blog posts and Instagram captions popping up everywhere, as people either rejoiced to see this woman finally experiencing the harsh realities of the ‘real world’, or crowed about the fact that Kondo had finally let her pretence of perfectionism fall away.

Now, I say this as someone who never got into the whole Kondo method. In fact, I was pretty dismissive of it because peak-Kondo struck at a time when her decluttering technique neither applied or appealed to me. I had two small kids and found that my approach to our home and the stuff we owned and the way we lived life worked for us. I didn’t need to hug my unwanted clothes before getting rid of them and thought the idea that my belongings had feelings actually made it harder to simplify rather than easier.

But it worked for her, and if the huge success of her books and Netflix series is anything to go by, it worked for millions of other people too. They simplified their homes, reconsidered their relationship with their belongings and (while it’s hard to say, but I’d like to think) made a shift in the way they viewed joy and what, exactly, sparks it. I think that’s awesome. Anything that helps people to reconsider the stuff we surround ourselves with and the impact it has on how we move through life is a positive thing.

As a side note, the lifestyle shop she launched a couple of years ago feels less aligned with this earlier message. If you visit her very beautiful online store you’ll find things like rose quartz dry body brushes for $75 and a set of five ‘Let go with gratitude’ paper bags to donate your unwanted stuff - for just $22!

And look, to be fair, as much as this feels a little bit like conspicuous consumption, a body brush that we keep for years is hardly the cluttery straw that’s going to break the camel’s back, is it? If we’re looking for truly troubling examples of grossly unsustainable stores we might want to look at trillion-dollar companies like fast-fashion behemoth Shein, which lists anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 new items on their online store every day and is said to produce as much C02 as more than 180 coal-fired power stations. (This Time article is really eye-opening if you’re interested to know more.)

Anyway. I love that Marie Kondo is being open about how the life she now lives is very different from the one she was living only a couple of years ago.

“My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.”

It’s refreshing to see people publicly own their evolution and I think it gives us permission to do the same. We’re allowed to change, grow, evolve, even if it makes other people unhappy or gleeful at our supposed comeuppance.

Marie Kondo giving up on tidying only proves that we all have seasons in life, and what works in one season will often not work in others. It doesn’t mean the approach suddenly becomes wrong, nor does it mean that the season is necessarily bad. Just different.

Last year was a season of surviving for us, and a lot of our decisions were made by trying to find the easiest way forward. This is in stark contrast to years before where we often chose the harder, more adventurous path in life. Does that mean we did life ‘wrong’ last year? That all our previous choices to do things a little left-of-centre suddenly became invalid? Or that everything I’d ever written about slow living up until that point was immediately proven to be untrue? Of course not.

But it did take some doing for me to understand that I could change. That I had permission to slip into the messy transition that often occurs between seasons. To not know all the answers and to not really know what the next iteration was going to be.

I’m just grateful that I had my foundation of personal values to fall back on. The footing that assured me I knew what was important in my life, and that it was okay to make choices – new and different choices – to support those things.

Which reminds me. I’m keen to run some online workshops again this year, and am wondering if you might be interested? At this stage I’m taking it slowly (as per last week’s post) but am thinking about a values workshop.

But for now, if you find yourself at a crossroads, perhaps unsure of how to apply your previous strategies to a new phase of life, I’d encourage you to spend some time thinking about the ways you’ve evolved, and, maybe, the ways you’re resisting change.

Some questions to ask yourself:

What stage (or stages) of life am I in currently?

Do you have a young family? Are you currently juggling study and work? Are you an empty nester? Are you pushing hard in your career? Are you experiencing good health? Or poor health? Do you currently care for a loved one? Etc.

Apply as few or as many to your life as needed. There’s no ‘good’ answer. Each stage has its own challenges and its own benefits.

Has this stage/stages changed over the past 12 months?

That is, have your circumstances shifted? If so, from what, to what? Have you added a stage, or removed several? Are you in a transition between stages?

What tools, tactics, strategies, beliefs or expectations do I currently use to help navigate life?

Perhaps you’re like me and have found benefits to things like:

• Cleaning the bathroom every Saturday morning

• Journalling every day, without fail, to help manage stress

• Spending 30 minutes every Monday morning planning the week ahead

Are there things on this list that no longer work for me?

If so, why are you holding on to them? Have they become part of your identity? Do you pride yourself on being able to do x, y or z even though they may not be serving you like they used to?  Are you unsure of how to replace them? Afraid of what might happen if you stop?

For example, I’ve recently stopped my daily journaling practice, instead doing my stream-of-consciousness writing only when I feel overwhelmed or particularly stressed. I realised over the holidays that it no longer felt helpful and instead had begun to feel like another thing on my ‘Self-Care To-Do List.’ So I stopped. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it doesn’t work for me right now. Instead, I’ll just pick that particular tool back up when I have something that needs to be built.

On the other hand, my Monday morning habit of sitting with Ben and looking at our week ahead is very much still working. In fact, I couldn’t do life without it.

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I guess these questions are just designed to prompt some thought about your own growth, your own evolution and the way change can sometimes sneak up on us.

It’s okay to revisit what works and what doesn’t, and like Marie Kondo has shown, it’s okay to let those parts of our identity fade into the background. We can look back on them fondly, knowing that we wouldn’t be who we are without them, but that doesn’t mean we need to drag them along forever.  

Here's to a weekend that sparks moments of joy!
Brooke xx

My daughter and I saw Harry Potter in Concert last weekend, and the whole day was one big joy-sparking excursion

Currently…

Using my phone timer multiple times a day. I use it to mark out my allotted 1% for various tasks (at the moment that’s mostly setting it for 15 minute workouts and 15 minutes of weeding) but I also use it to check how long tasks actually take. So often I put off doing things, only to discover that they take hardly any time at all. Back in early January, I kept avoiding the job of packing up the Christmas tree and decorations, but I set the timer and found it took less than 30 minutes in total.   

Making progress on the weedmageddon (see last week’s Currently… for context.)

Enjoying a handful of beautiful, new (to me) Substacks. Human Stuff by

Lisa Olivera

/ The Hyphen by

Emma Gannon

/ The Slowpoke by

Carson Ellis

. What substacks are you enjoying at the moment?

Wishing my dear dad a happy birthday and looking forward to seeing my fam to celebrate. After the 2021 from hell (he spent more than four months in the ICU) I’m never not grateful to be able to give him a hug. Same goes for my entire family.

Looking forward to releasing a special episode of the podcast next Thursday. You’re not going to want to miss it, especially if you’ve found yourself wondering what our pod-plans are for the year ahead.

Spent some time making this little collage tortoise last week. He’s our new mascot and I’m currently taking name suggestions… Hit me up in the comments.